NEWS IN BRIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LVIII, Issue 17662, 24 December 1920, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEWS IN BRIEF.

A fire at Rio de Janeiro docks caused damage estimated at £1,500.000. There was a deficit, of £1,050.000 in Chile for 1919 and £825,G00 for this yearIt costs the corporation of London £74,000 a year to keep the streets of the city clean. Some English parents are baying surplus army identification discs for theiE children to wear. Protracted drought has ruined tbs banana industry in many parts of ths island of Jamaica. A toad hears readily. The ears, however. axe not visible, being covered by the skin of the skull. Vesuvius ha? been active in the ls?i three months, but the eruptions have all been inside the crater. • In one recent week the population of Great Britain increased by an excess of 6000 births over deaths. Bengal Ministerial officers have received temporary- increases of salaries of 15 to 30 per cent, to meet the high cost of living. At the harvest thanksgiving service ati est W ycombe, Bucks, lumps of coal vera Qisplaved as well as the usual gifts of corn and produce. A salt marsh 185 miles square, believed to be the saltiest in the world, has been found at Senlac, Saskatchewan. The marsh is ISiii. deep. Fashionable Parisian women motored to the Ternes gate of the cit% to witness the first rat-catching by dogs officially heid since before tho war. Displaced cJuring the war by the steel helmet, the French soldier's cap, the kepi, will in all probability be tired again iss the French Army shortly. London's oldest markets are said to b® Smithfield, where cattle were sold in 1150, and Billingsgate, which is reputed to have meea founded in 400 B.C. English lifeboat men rcceive payment on a scale ranging from 15s for summer day service to £3 7s 6d for service covering a day and night during winter. Sugar supplies from the new German harvest which are now coming in are estimated at 2.200,000.000cwt.. an increase of 3,OOD,OOOcwt. over the spring supply. Two men in New Jersey have been removed to hospital on account of serious illness contracted through eating oysters for a, bet. One ate 79 and the other 82. Ten thousand claims for damages sustained in the recent revolution were received from Mexican citizens. The sum of £1,150,000 was claimed by foreign residents. Canadian customs revenue for the first six months of the present financial year amounted to £27.890,000 —an increase of £6.000,000 over the corresponding period of last year. Commercial travellers in England ar» using motor-caravans as a means of locomotion. and arc finding gipsy life not 'only conducive to their tastes, but an excellent} advertisement. A motor-driven fan has bean designed to be placed inside a doorway and to create a circular current of air, keeping out cola, -svind, rain, and insects, and s& making a door unnecessary. Tl*e total value of sea fish marketed iii a fresh state in Canada last year was £8.225,000. The largest individual revenue came from salmon, which continues to, maintain its place as Canada's premier fish. French railways will show a lots this year, it is estimated, of £32,600.000. German State railways show a deficit., of 18,000,000.000 marks {nominally £900,000,000) for the present , financial year. London boasts of two places, at least, where the curfew bell is rung regularly. One is Lincoln's Inn and the other is at the Charterhouse, where the bells toll for the benefit of the " Poor Brothers" in residence. A stun of over £.1,000.000 will be spent this year in improving the main highways of Canada. : Of this* amount, the Dominion Government will contribute two-fifths, tha provincial Governments to find the remainder. Trout lay their eggs in shallow, gravelly Btretches. A trout lays 1000 eggs for each pound of her weight. But hardly three in 100 hatch out, .for the rest pi the inhabitants of the stream are waiting to devour them. i In Germany nearly 70 per cent, of tha annual output of ICO.OCO.COO pallona of alcohol is got from potates. In France, oa the other hand, the chief source of industrial alcohol has been tho molasses irons the beet-sugar refineries. Trees often live to a very great- age, and while they are standing it is a difficult matter to arrive at tho age of these; but when they have been cut down tie- age of the tree may he reckoned bv counting the number of rings visible in the section. A recent London fog cost £32-50 in extra lighting alone, and altogether—taking into account lost traffic receipts, lost time, and smaller items such as fog signals—probably cost the city nearly 25,000, or £250 for every ton of iog. It is exactly lour centuries since Cortea and his handful of Spaniards destroyed the Aztec civilisation in their mad lust for gold. To-day a collection of Aztec and Inca gold valued at £1,000,000 is or. view at, the museum of the University of Pennsylvania.

Many were the perquisitea which fell formerly to the lot of tne Constablo of the l ower ot London. At one time it was to his interest to have as many prisoners a<i possible. A duke had to pay him £20 ajs an entrance fee. an earl £15, a baron £10 and a knight £5. Greater London holds 1,000,000 mora people than are to be found in the vhoig of Australia and New Zealand, with ail A ' rnost as large as Europe. Its dwellers could replace every man, woman, and child in all Canada, or re-peonls .Norway three times. So vast is oLndcn's population that to pay the food bill for a year would cnll for a cheque fo r £120,000.000. Among th« many formidable items of the bill would appear 4,000,000 saks of flour. 5.000,000 sacks of unground wheat. 94.000.0001b of butter, 450,000 tons of meat., 63,000 000 gallons of milk, and 500,000,000 eggs. Several of the curfew bells in England are kept, ringing because of ?ome old legend or custom. That at Chertsev, in Surrey, for instance, which had been "rung regularly for centuries until stopped tern" porarily during the war, is the one mada famous by the legend which relates howBlanche Heriot, to save the life of her lover, condemned to die at sundown, climbed the carfew tower and held the clapper of the great bell, declaring-that "curfew shall not ring to-night.'* There seems to be no end to the various kinds of phonograph needles- "Playing records with a chip of a brick is the latest in phonograph needles—and the invention of an lowa man. It is claimed that this needle of clay will play, -with a very clear tone and witn little surface noise, at least 200 times- The needles are made from a dark red or chocolate-coloured shale. As the shale has practically no grain, and rsa grit i-i present, it is found that a very high polish is taken on where it comes into contact with the record. A novel method of locating sardine schools was tried recently in Southern California, and so successful did it prove that a definite scheme has beers -worked out "by the fishing companies. _ The scheme is to use hydroplanes to-skim close to the surface of the water and watch for the schools, and when discovered -word is instantly sent to the •waiting boats, -which go to'the locality of the fish. ' So far the seaplanes used hare been those attached to the naval air station at San and, £.s these machines are equipped witit •wireless outfits, tho agistors can keep, in Inst&nl-iGsdk- 'ffiia 1 n